**Warning: This Article contains minor spoilers**
The Predator movies have always had their place in my heart. There have been some ‘meh’ ones in the series (looking at you, The Predator 2018). Prey is the latest offering in the series and sees young would be huntress from the Comanche tribe face off against the Predator in the early 1700s. The movie was filmed on location under natural light in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. So it really looked like the wilds of Northern America during that era. The movie itself was really good. I enjoyed every second of it. The setting was a good change of pace for the series, and seeing the Predator sulk around in this time period was so much fun. This is roughly 300 years before the original, so The Predator also had different versions of his gear. The shoulder cannon was replaced by a homing knife launcher, for example. He also had a shield that came in handy for when people fired off muskets at him, though with the technology he had, he would have at a serious disadvantage against Dutch and his team in the original movie, so either this Predator is using technology that it had available to it during this time period or it was using technology on par with its target on purpose for a fair fight, as the Yautja have some sort of code of honour. Either way, getting a slightly different, more primitive Predator was a highlight of the movie. He is being dubbed as The Feral Predator and the name couldn’t be more fitting. Seeing him take on a bear with his bare hands and hunting wolves and then moving onto people made him even scarier. The movie played well on the ‘we’re being watched’ trope in its first act, but as soon as the gig was up for The Feral Predator and the big reveal happened, the movie went hard with the action. People lost limbs and got blown up and ripped apart. The Predator also took quite a lot of damage throughout the movie, which added to how brutal this movie actually is.
The main characters were all of Native American descent and it made for a very authentic depiction of the Comanche Tribe’s way of life. Amber Thunderbird, who was the title’s main actress, has established herself as an action heroine after this movie and I hope to see more of her in these kinds of roles.
I am so excited to see where the series takes this new direction. The movie was a breath of fresh air, which is what the series needed, and I hope we see more spin-offs set in different time periods. The potential is endless with this new approach.
